


Escapology

by arbitraryspace



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Crack Pairing, F/F, Romance, Timey Wimey Stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-04
Updated: 2010-09-04
Packaged: 2017-10-11 11:24:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/111907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitraryspace/pseuds/arbitraryspace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Donna Noble's stuck in her own head.  What she needs is a little escapology.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Escapology

**Author's Note:**

> Written for lj's netgirl_y2k, as part of the Fifth Annual Doctor Who Femslash Ficathon.

When the new pensioner moves in across the street, it takes Donna's mum all of two minutes to conclude that the neighbourhood is now five steps away from being torn down to build council flats. Somehow they manage to get into a row over the movers being double-parked -- or at least, Donna's mum gets into the row. The new pensioner just sort of smiles and nods and wins their argument without actually arguing.

Donna decides that she likes her already.

"Sorry," Donna says, once her mum has stormed off. "She's only out of sorts because she's going to miss Eastenders."

Donna declines to mention that if it were _her_ who was trapped against the curb, she would shout bloody murder until the moving blokes hauled their sorry asses out of her way. She'd rather introduce herself.

"I'm Donna. Donna Noble. That's-- er, that was my Mum."

Best to get the part where she's still living with her mother out of the way. The reveal is like ripping off a bandage. You have to do it fast, and early, or else it's tempting to let the facts sit there and moulder.

"Josephine Grant." The new pensioner beams. "Call me Jo."

Jo doesn't get that tightness around her eyes, the way most people do when they're trying really hard not to judge her. Donna decides that she likes her even more.

The movers jostle past them, carrying what appears to be a six foot tall bamboo birdcage, and a screen that looks like it belongs in a really posh Indian restaurant.

"What is all this?" Donna asks.

"Odds and ends," Jo says, airily, like they're hauling around a bunch of Ikea furniture instead of the contents of the bloody Royal Museum. "I've lived in a lot of places." She notices Donna looking at a fan in the back of the lorry. "D'you like it? That's from when I worked in Brazil."

"What did you do before you retired?"

"This and that. Saved the planet, mostly."

Ah. Some kind of environmentalist, then. That would explain what a woman with that accent and those furnishings is doing moving to Chiswick, of all places. She mustn't have a great deal of savings.

Donna scuffs her heel on the sidewalk, and squints up at the clouds that screen the pale northern sun. "I'd love to go to Brazil," she says.

"Perhaps you will, one day."

"Nah, I won't. Can't afford it. Not in this recession." Or any other time, on a temp's salary. When Donna was fresh out of school she used to cut the pages out of magazines and imagine herself going on honeymoon halfway across the globe. God, she'd been so naive.

If Jo has noticed the face that Donna is pulling, she's tactful enough not to show it.

"I suppose," Jo says. She gestures for Donna to get out from underfoot and follow her inside the house. "I can't offer to help fund a plane ticket, I'm afraid, but I can buy us some fish and chips, if you're willing to help an old lady unpack."

"You're not that old." Donna smiles a little, and trails after her. It's nice to feel like she can be useful even though she's still unemployed.

Donna's a hard worker, and a good organizer, so she takes to Jo Grant's mess of trinkets like a duck to water. Unpacking's not a proper job, exactly, because Donna's not getting paid, but the take-away is decent, and Donna can't say she minds listening to all of Jo's wild stories about foreign countries. Jo even gives her some kind of weird hippie candle thing that won't burn when she puts a match to it.

Not a bad haul, all in all.

++

 

Weeks later, Donna knows Jo well enough to understand that she probably would have preferred a nice salad to fish and chips, but that she's not the kind of scold who makes a big fuss about keeping to a diet. Donna also knows that Jo can't clear her own eaves, that Jo is thrilled to see the ruffle back in fashion, and that Jo is continually having to borrow eggs because she never bothers to write up a grocery list.

Donna never envisioned herself becoming mates with someone older than her own Mum, and maybe it's kind of weird, but she's home all day and Jo's new to the area and there's no harm in them both wanting company. It does Donna good to be around someone who doesn't know she cracked up after being dumped at the altar.

One day Jo invites Donna to go and see a play with her, as thanks for taking care of the yard-work. Donna agrees, of course, and tries not to wonder what must have happened to Jo, to make her give up on her exciting, globe-trotting life and settle for dragging Donna out to off-brand theatre.

The theatre's based in a shabby little corner of the city. It's the kind of outfit that sets up in an abandoned chip shop because it can't afford a proper run-down warehouse. The outer walls are covered in posters that blend the British Petroleum logo with a leering skull, which is how Donna figures out that the troop is made up of college-age progressives being precious.

Jo charms them past the ticket-takers and bustles Donna backstage. An older-looking man is waiting for them there. He's dressed like somebody's hipster grandpa but he carries himself like a soldier.

Jo introduces the soldier as Mike Yates, the stage manager for this little production.

"So that's Donna?" Yates looks Donna over like she's a new model of tank or something. Cheeky bastard.

"Yes." Jo jams her heel down on his left foot.  "Yes it is."

"What do you mean _'so that's Donna'_?" Donna demands, parking her hands on her hips.

Only Yates is suddenly making an effort not to pay her any attention. "I should go take care of the lights," he says, almost as an afterthought, before walking off to bark orders at a boy carrying a foam-rubber penis. "Cuthbert! Put that down."

"He didn't mean anything," Jo takes Donna by the arm to keep her from chasing after Yates. "Mike is an old friend of mine.  He was with the army, until he got into activism and transcendental meditation."

"Yeah." Donna casts a weather eye on the bright young things that have placed themselves under Yates' command. "I'll bet he _was_ with the army, til they threatened to make him cut off that ponytail. Pervy old goat."

Jo frowns. "Mike cares a lot about saving the Earth."

Donna doesn't believe her, and they end up not talking much until the first act of the play is interrupted by a funny sort of street gang. The members wear bright vinyl, like some kind of 1980's revival. Their skin is too smooth and their mouths are twisted into big round o-shapes. Donna thinks that they must be part of the performance until they start throwing chairs around.

Jo herds Donna into the women's washroom while Yates leads his children in fending off the invaders with sharp pieces of the set. Luckily there aren't many other audience members to be bothered about; Donna sees them race out the back door before the fighting gets too bad.

"What were those things?" Donna leans against a stall door, chest heaving. She's not used to running around like that. She hates that she left her phone on the floor, with all those kids out there in danger. Useless. She's so bloody useless.

"Who were those people? Teenagers, I suspect." Jo, on the other hand, hardly has a hair out of place.

"No, no, what _were_ those things?" Donna presses, regaining her breath.  "They looked like plastic.  It's Night of the Living Blow-Up Dolls out there.  But that can't be, can it?"

"Donna..." Jo reaches out her hand, but stops short of touching Donna's shoulder. Donna can hear fighting outside and oh, it's terrible.

"I know, I know, it's crazy.  It's my head." Donna shrinks in on herself just long enough to wring all the wrong words out. "I get like this, sometimes. I had an accident and lost my memory.  And the doctors say it's normal to get migraines after, or to have dizzy spells, but it's not like that, it's not like what they say the symptoms should be at all.  It's like an iron band around my temple, and I can't, I can't--"

Donna squeezes her eyes shut and feels the hurt well up, burning her nerves from the inside out. If she could just--

"We're not really trapped in this room, you know," Jo interrupts Donna's anxiety attack. She walks over to the frosted bathroom window, which is both locked and barred.

Donna stares stupidly at Jo through her fringe. "We're not?"

"Of course not." Jo removes something that looks like a hatpin from her purse.  "I'll have you know that back in the day, I was a trained escapologist."

"That's a degree?"

"Nope.  But it's a bit more intriguing than a degree, you have to admit."

Jo grins at her, so Donna smiles back on reflex. It's such a relief not to see pity in Jo's eyes that Donna doesn't have to force a happy expression.

"Yeah, well," Donna says. "Let's see you type one hundred and twenty words per minute."

"The thing about escapology, Donna, is that if you can't break a restraint, you've got to think of a way to slip around it.  There's no sense in battering your head against a brick wall. So maybe you feel a little... stuck, sometimes.  You don't need to fight it.  You just need to find a way of thinking that doesn't hurt quite so much."

Jo sets to work on the lock, then puts some oil stuff on the hinges.

"Why dwell on what those awful gatecrashers may or may not be made of?" Jo continues. "There's no harm in just thinking of them as people.  No harm to them and no harm to you.  Thinking of everyone as people, no matter _what_ they look like, is one of your absolute best talents.  I won't have you selling it short."

"You talk like you know me," Donna mutters.

"Oh, I read your tea leaves, that's all." Jo's hands flit back and forth over the bars, until the grate squeaks open of its own accord.  "There we are.  Come on. Mike will be calling some friends in to help with those thugs.  I'd say the least we can do is have a round waiting for them at the pub when they're done."

Jo slides the hatpin into Donna's pocket, for reasons that Donna is not prepared to fathom. Then Jo pushes the window open so that they can crawl out.

++

The strange trip to the play should change everything, but in actuality, it changes nothing at all. It feels like the whole thing was a fever dream. Donna can't help but be a bit depressed about it. Nothing ever changes for her, not ever, and she's so sick of it that she could scream the whole neighbourhood down.

Instead, she takes up complaining to Jo in the pub on lazy weekday afternoons. Donna's new temp post is only part-time, so she's still got plenty of hours to kill, finding excuses not to lay about her mum's house.

"-- so I say to him, if you think you can just waltz onto public transit during peak hours and take up a whole seat with your gym bag, you can think again, mister.  Because there are _ladies_ in the crowd here who need to sit down.  And do you know what he says back?  He says -- 'sorry, ma'am, I didn't think you were young enough to be pregnant.' The nerve of that little shit!  And I--"

Donna pauses in mid-rant to take stock of the indulgent look that Jo is giving her. Jo's wearing that thing with the lace and the flouncing, and she's parked her pointy chin in one hand, which makes her look even more elfin than usual.

"Oh, what," Donna says.

"Nothing, nothing." Jo waves her question off.  "Do go on."

"No, seriously, what."

"Don't be offended," Jo says.  "It's only that you're terribly cute when you get all worked up over a good cause."

"Cute."

"Yes, cute!" Jo insists, like the madwoman she clearly is. "Cute like one of those tiny bulldogs."

"Cute like a bulldog."

"Exactly.  Like a bulldog." Jo nods to herself.  "But much prettier."

"High praise," Donna scoffs.

"Say, Donna?  You're looking a bit flushed." Jo retrieves a yellow rock from her purse, and slides it to Donna across the table.  "Why don't you take this healing crystal I picked up.  It should be very good for your biorhythms.  The maharishi who blessed it is all sorts of famous in India."

Donna doesn't have any pockets in this skirt, so she sticks the crystal into the cleavage of her bra. That's when she notices the way Jo's gaze follows her hand into the shadow of her breasts.

"Yeah, sure, that's great." Donna swallows, and tries not to panic. "Let me buy you another drink."

Oh, hell.

How did she and Jo start dating without anyone telling her?

++

 

Donna has no space to think, and no one to call. Her old mates have pulled away from her since she turned into a headcase, and even if that weren't so, this isn't something she'd really want to share with them. She doesn't want to make a fool of herself. Lips, hips, cleavage and curves – they're everywhere, on adverts and the like, but they've never been _dangerous_ before.

There's only one thing for it. Donna fills a thermos full of hot cocoa, and heads out into the night to visit Gramps. It's early fall, so the North Wind doesn't bite quite yet, and Donna is thankful for it. She worries about Gramps catching cold out here. They might not get him back from a chest infection.

Gramps takes his eye off the telescope when he hears Donna coming. She starts talking before he can begin to fuss.

"Oh, not this.  Please not this _again_," she says.  "I'm not breakable, Gramps.  It's me!  Donna!"

"Right you are, Donna." Gramps says, chagrinned. "Now you just sit down here and give that to me."

Donna sits in one of the cheap lawn chairs they keep out here, while Gramps pours their cocoa into the mugs he keeps on hand. The world seems to slow down in this place. Donna isn't sure if that's the stars at work, or just Gramps being Gramps, bringing calm.

"Something on your mind, Donna?" Gramps asks, once their beverages are sorted.

"Nah."  Donna breathes in the vapour from the cocoa. "Well, yeah." She looks up.  "It's just.  Have you ever felt like there has to be more than what you've been working for?  Like there's a other whole life out there you could have been living, for years and years, except you just never thought about it?"

Maybe it's only the moonlight, but Donna would swear that Gramps has just gone white as a sheet.

"I'm happy, Donna," he says, with some urgency. "I'm happy right where I am, with you and your Mum. I hope so much that one day you'll be happy too."

Donna takes a sip of her drink, and tries not to feel embarrassed.

"You liar."  Donna smiles. "You're always looking up at your stars." She brushes her hair back. "But no, that's not what I was getting at.  It's Jo Grant, from across the way.  I think she's been hitting on me."

Gramps makes a funny sort of choking noise.

"That's it?  That's what you're worked up about?"

"I think she's been hitting on me _all the time_," Donna amends. "And I didn't say there was anything wrong with it!  It's strange, is all.  I've never been hit on by a woman before.  Not seriously.  And she's practically Mum's age, for God's sake.  But we were out shopping the other day, 'cos she doesn't know where the good stores are around here, and I was trying on this cami and I guess she decided I needed some help with that because her hands were--"

"Er, well.  Like I said: I want you to be happy.  Be happy and stay safe.  That's what's important."

"-- and she used to be like one of these Houdini performers, right, so she keeps asking me if I want to try her handcuffs out and I--"

Gramps turns desperately back to his telescope.

"Oh, look!" He says, loudly.  "There's a meteor, isn't that a treat.  Wouldn't you like to look at the meteor, Donna?"

Okay, so maybe talking to Gramps about her sexual confusion wasn't the brightest idea. Gramps always makes Donna feel better, and that's what's important.

"Sure, Gramps." She goes to stand beside him. "That'd be great."

+++

 

Donna lets herself into Jo's house with the key she's been given in case of emergency, and tracks Jo down in the kitchen area.  She knows that she's being rude, barging in like this, but to hell with it, she's on a mission, and Jo certainly doesn't seem phased.  Jo barely even pauses in her dishwashing.

"Hullo, Donna," Jo says.  She finishes wiping down the last of her plates, then turns off the tap.  "Rough day?  Some Earl Grey with a splash of Gran Marnier will cheer you right up."

Jo transitions seamlessly to filling up the kettle, while Donna sits herself down by the kitchen counter.  Jo's furniture is just the right height for Donna to hook her ankles around the chair-legs and settle in for a really good telling-off.  This one's been building in her for a day and a night, winding tighter and tighter with each stray thought, and Donna is more than ready to snap.

"I'm not a lesbian, I'll have you know," she starts in, apropos of nothing.  "I mean, I was engaged to a businessman.  A successful business _man_.   And I may not remember why he left me, on account of the nervous breakdown, but it was definitely not the sex, let me tell you.  I was a_maz_ing."

Donna realizes all too late that she's been gesturing like a madwoman. Her arm only barely misses the vase full of fresh daisies that Jo has put out by the window.

"Oh."  Jo blinks, nonplussed.  "Well... that's nice?"

"It is nice," Donna agrees.  "Yeah. Good."

Except it doesn't feel good.  It feels like she has a thousand more things to say, but that none of them will settle in her throat long enough for her to give them voice.  Jo isn't giving Donna's indignation much to work with, here.

Donna crosses her arms.  Then uncrosses them.  Then crosses them again. Jo has liberated a half-full bottle of liquor from one of her cabinets, and she sets it down in front of Donna before retrieving the teacups.

"I was engaged to a man myself, once,"  Jo says.  "For all of a week, before we were married by a missionary priest in the middle of the Brazilian jungle."  She grins, and Donna can't help but notice how deep her smile lines have gotten.  

"My first marriage -- Lord, what a mess! Of course it didn't work out.  I'd married him because he reminded me of a very dear friend of mine, and it turned that he he didn't share as much of my friend's better nature as I'd hoped."  Jo dismisses her ex with a shake of her head. "The sex started out alright, but I went off it when he wouldn't let me fly the helicopter."

Donna wrinkles her nose.  "So, your friend... it wasn't Mike, was it?"

"Heavens, no."  Jo laughs, and turns away to tend to the kettle.

"But you were in love with this friend."

"I wouldn't say that, exactly.  He hated parties, he had a whole ship full of baggage, and half the time he was completely thoughtless.  Not my type at all!"  The laughter is still in Jo's voice, but there's something wistful about her, too, and Donna finds herself inexplicably envious. "But I liked being able to take care of someone as extraordinary as he was.  It felt like I was making a real difference in the world."  She pours their tea, then pours the liquor.  "And I loved the life he gave me.  We had some grand adventures.  So I thought, if I could be partners with someone very much _like_ him, but also sexy, social, and considerate, that would really be absolutely perfect."

Jo peers over her shoulder to give Donna a significant look, only Donna can't make heads or tails of what exactly it's supposed to signify.  She isn't some globe-trotting eco-charity sophisticate, and clearly her notion that Jo was hitting on her was absolute rubbish.  She shouldn't have presumed that she was speaking the same language as Josephine Grant.

Jo's just as far out of her league as those investment bankers were.

"Not aiming too high, were we?"  Donna blusters, in order to cover up the fact that she's feeling quite stung.

Jo slides a steaming teacup towards Donna, before taking up her own.

"A girl's got to have standards,"  Jo says, and smiles into the rim of her cup.

Donna's drink smells wonderful.  She resolves not to touch it.  "Right. So... thanks for sharing that." Donna stands up.  Flushes.  Brushes some invisible dirt off her thighs.  "Sorry.  Rain check?  I've been set up with one of the boys from the mail room at work, so I'll-- that is-- I should go."

"A date, you say?"  Jo stands up as well. "Hold on a minute.  Take this."

Jo rummages around in her pockets -- removing a pack of gum, a ten pence coin, and a funny-looking antique compact -- until her search produces what looks like a crumpled bit of red wax paper. She promptly presses it into Donna's left hand.

"Do I want to know what this is?"  Donna asks.  The wax paper isn't unpleasant, exactly, but its texture is strangely oily where it warms to her touch, and there are funny circuit-patterns in the surface.  It must be some designer new-age woo-woo stuff.  They probably made it in Hong Kong for pennies a sheet and then sold it to people like Jo for a small fortune.

"Trust me," Jo says.  "Keep it with you.  It will do your love life a world of good."

Donna nods, and shoves the paper in her own pocket.  She doesn't want to  
hurt Jo's feelings.  She's made enough of a hash out of things already.

+++

Neither Donna nor Shaun-from-the-mailroom have any money to go on a real date, so they end up watching Britain's Got Talent in Donna's mother's sitting room. It's not as excruciating as it might have been, since Shaun most definitely _is_ in her league, and he's a nice bloke, to boot. Nice. Bland. Inoffensive. Stuck in Chiswick, just like her.

They awkwardly discuss the latest celebrity gossip, and Donna guesses she's glad she doesn't have to pretend to know anything about politics. Shaun doesn't have any adventures to share but he's polite and he knows about... mail, so that's good. Everyone needs mail. Who's Donna, to pretend like she's so much more interesting or important.

"So how 'bout that Susan Boyle?" Shaun ventures. "That was a really touching story."

"Yeah, really touching," Donna agrees.

Her mind wanders aimlessly, and her hands play with some junk that's been sitting by the couch. Wax paper. A candle. A crystal. A long sort of pin. She doesn't think about what she's doing. It's only fidgeting, after all.

"Listen, Donna." Shaun leans forward to try and get her attention. "The show's a bit slow tonight. What do you say we take a walk around the street?"

Shaun is never to know what Donna would say, because in that moment, the device that Donna's subconscious has been constructing clicks into completion, and she vanishes from the sitting room with a crackle-boom-flash.

+++

Donna stumbles in the surf and falls straight back on her ass, flailing inelegantly in the clear salt water.  At some point in her thrashings she loses track of the smoking hunk of metal she's been carrying, but that's not top priority, that's really okay, because the sun is bright in her eyes, and she can hear samba music in the distance and there are seagulls squawking above her and _what the hell_.  Light and heat and smell and sensation attack her poor, dulled senses like a street riot.

Donna never knew that the sun could be this warm.

A blonde woman in a bikini makes her way towards Donna through the rising waves. She looks like something out of an old fashion magazine; the kind that teenaged boys used to wank over, before the invention of the internet.

"Hello!  Oh, hello!  Are you okay?"  the woman calls out.

"I don't know!" Donna shouts back.

She also doesn't know if she feels like laughing or screaming, so she settles on gaping around like an idiot.

"That transmat did look like it went rather poorly," the woman says.  She offers Donna a sympathetic smile, as well as a hand to help her up.  Donna should probably be suspicious, because this was all mental, but instead she reached out to clasp the woman's wrist.

"S'pose so. Yeah."

"Are you an alien, then?"

"An alien?!"

The woman pulls Donna back to her feet, not fussed by all her yelling. "Oh, yes, I've been looking for some here in Rio. That's how I'm celebrating my divorce. I was going to go live in the top of a tree to keep the loggers from getting at it, but it turns out that they don't serve caiprinhas in the rainforest and also the canopy is full of these terrible bugs."

"Wait," Donna says. She grabs the woman by the chin and looks her all over, heedless of small things like politeness or personal space. "Wait-- it can't be. No way. No. Way. _Jo_?"

"Um, yes?" Jo blinks. "Are you a _psychic_ alien, then? That's novel. Well, not really, but it is rather impressive."

The pain in Donna's head flares up and outwards, sparking straight from the  
base of her neck to the space between her eye sockets.

"Stop talking about aliens for a moment, all right?"

Donna winces, but she's grinning, she's cracked up, she's gone _completely_ mad, and younger Jo Grant is too surprised to resist when Donna uses a kiss to shut her up.

+++

Jo sits on the porch and watches her ambient energy scanner until she detects a sudden burst of artron radiation from the vicinity of Sylvia Noble's kitchen. Satisfied, she closes the scanner's pretty cameo casing and heads back into the house.  Donna Noble has managed to blast herself back into the past; Donna Noble-Grant will want to hear about it.

Jo follows the sound of the television until she finds Donna sitting on a chair in the basement, surrounded by a collection of coat-hangers that have been twisted into what looks like a replica of l'Arc du Triomphe. Jo has no idea how this device will work, and she knows better than to ask Donna to explain the mechanics behind her strange subconscious inventions.  Questions would only give her poor Donna a headache, and even if they didn't, Jo hated A-level maths for a reason, that reason being that maths are very dull.

Donna does not look up when Jo walks down the stairs.  She's busy watching the Eurovision Song Contest, her grey head bobbing along to something incomprehensibly Swedish.

"Well, that sorted itself out nicely. We'll have to go tell Wilf once your show's over."  Jo announces, before her lips slide into a pout that would have suited her when she was twenty-two. As it happens, the pout _still_ suits her.   Jo isn't so boring as to wander around the time-stream aging gracefully.  "You know, I'm almost sad to see you go?  You were adorable at that age."

"And I had amazing tits," Donna adds.

"And we had _amazing_ tits," Jo agrees, with a mournful sigh.  She pads up beside Donna's chair and leans in to kiss the crook of her neck. "Have you finished not-thinking-about where we're going to go next?"

"The nerve of you, you filthy old bird!"  Donna bats at her, mostly because she enjoys protesting things.  "As a matter of fact: no, I haven't.  All your perving on younger me has done my head in."  She pointedly sets her remote control down.  "I _could_ use a distraction. Something to focus on until my subconscious kicks in."

Jo giggles and slides the handcuffs out of her pocket.


End file.
